


Dying Breed

by intimatopia



Category: Heartstopper (Webcomic), Solitaire - Alice Oseman
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Doctor Who AU, F/M, Self-Harm, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 04:45:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16825402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intimatopia/pseuds/intimatopia
Summary: Still points need still points too. The center of the universe needs its own center.





	Dying Breed

At Salem in 1934, they call her witch and try to burn her. It doesn’t work, of course. Tori and death go back a long way, in that she keeps trying to find him and he keeps running away. _Why is death a guy?_ She asks herself, and ponders that question for a long time as the flames lick up her sides and burn her blue overcoat, and her fitted underclothes. In the dead of night when the flames have killed all the night vision this city could have, she slips away to her little boat and sails into the stars. Nobody notices. That’s just how it is.

***

When they were younger and Tori still lived with her family, her brother had told her she was the still point in a turning universe, an eternity of her own. “That sounds like a curse,” Tori had said, and her brother replied, “That’s why _you’re_ the still point and not anybody else.”

The words had echoed in her mind for the next hundred years. _Still point, still point, still point._ Until she carved them into her skin and then they fell silent, until the scars faded.

Even tattoos, Tori learnt, didn’t last forever. Certainly not longer than a couple hundred years.

Whatever.

***

She lands in the forests of a desert planet, eats out a girl to save her from a witch. “I thought you were a witch,” the girl says, while Tori is still licking slick from the inside of her own mouth.

“I am the witch,” Tori says. “I’m the bad witch.”

“You saved me,” the girl says, and blushes.

“I’m the worst witch,” Tori says, and gets back into the ship. That night she nurses her loneliness like fine wine, and thinks, _still point._

Still point.

Tori Spring, wanderer, still point, _witch_.

***

In Keluaki they tell her that they’ve been waiting for her and she nearly leaves right then. But there is so much to do. People to help, planets to save. All her fault. She lights fire after fire and it isn’t enough. She speaks every language ever spoken and it isn’t enough.

People to fail, planets to watch burn.

***

Tori has been lying here for a few hundred...something. _Minutes_ is not likely, but _hours_ feels like too much and _years_ feels like not enough. She’s looking up and thinking about the narrative, and the blood she’s lying in that’s almost definitely hers, and the fact that nobody is coming to save her, not even death. Maybe she’ll die here. That would be so good, but it doesn’t seem likely. Increasingly she’s begun to suspect that death just hates her. That is very unfair, because they’ve never really spoken.

People make snap judgements about Tori all the time, but this is one she minds.

When was the last time anybody touched her, anyway? She tries to touch herself and finds the knife.

Oh, right. Knife. She did this to herself, then.

What a pity. Why doesn’t anybody like her enough to kill her? Hasn’t she done enough to earn being liked, even loved? People should be falling over themselves to give her what she wants.

A hundred years is too long to bleed out and not die.

She curls up and it hurts. Everything is wet. She just wanted to die.

She just wanted—

Drops the knife, touches her lips with bloody fingers. All that pain, for what.

Not even a kiss.

She closes her eyes and wishes.

***

When she woke up again, she was in a bed. Her arms felt heavy—bandages? Yes, bandages.

“You’re awake,” a voice said.

“Unfortunately,” Tori said.

“I don’t know,” the guy says. It’s probably a guy. “ _I’m_ pretty glad you’re okay.”

She bursts into tears. _How embarrassing_ , she think hysterically, and cries harder until she feels somebody touch her, at which point she attempts murder.

She must be weaker than she thinks, because he’s still alive at the end of it. And she’s pinned to the bed, held by somebody who’s definitely stronger than her, holding himself above her.

Blue eye, brown eye. Green eye? Nope, two eyes. Pretty normal. How many eyes is normal? Do people with four and a half eyes think that’s normal? Who is she to judge.

“A person with two eyes,” she says out loud, and the guy nods in agreement.

“That’s us,” he confirms.

Fuck. He’s almost—and she physically can’t believe she’s thinking this—hot. Or maybe that’s just her, feeling skin against her skin for the first time in forever. Since a planet burned and she was the only person to walk away. “Who are you?” She asks, and her voice breaks.

“Michael.”

“Oh,” she whispers. Closes her eyes. “Will you stay?”

“Yes,” he says softly. “What’s your name?”

“Tori.”

“Tori. Tori, Victory? Victoria?”

“Victoria.”

“Oh. Toria.”

 _No_ , she tries to say, but she’s falling asleep.

***

Michael takes knives out of her hands. Teaches her to kiss by putting her on the counter and talking her through it. She can’t believe she forgot how to do this.

She played kissing games on earth, she thinks. She doesn’t really remember. Everything's so blurry, except Michael, who also takes her to the park. They feed ducks; Tori cries. She doesn’t think she’ll ever top this. All the good she’s done, and all the bad, and none of it matches up to this moment under the sun and over the grass, feeding ducks.

She has to lean into Michael. He kisses the top of her head. _I don’t want to do anything else_ , Tori thinks. _This is the best thing I’ve ever done, and I have saved the universe more times than I can count._

Then she tells herself that’s a selfish thing to think. Tori Spring doesn’t do happy. Never has.

But Michael likes her on her knees and she likes him when his hair is messy and they like each other when Michael runs his fingers all over her and her bones feel like they’re about to grow flowers, straining inside her to get closer to him, his warmth, him. The sun. Toria, he calls her, and she wants to say no but she forgot how, sometime between getting him inside her and the flowers.

The springtime of Toria Spring, Michael says. She hits him with a book. And then she kisses him. Or he kisses her. There is kissing, which is the important thing.

He ties her soul back to her. She doesn’t even believe in souls.

***

“How did you find me?” she asks. Michael is sick, a flu, getting better.

“That’s my secret, Doctor Spring.”

“Don’t call me that.”

He raises a hand to her face. His eye is powder blue. “When I get better,” he says. “We’ll go to the city of love.”

“New York, you mean.”

“That’s the _city_ ,” he says. Gestures between them. “ _This_ is the love.”

She’s smiling. “And what will we find there?”

“Bacon,” he tells her. “Eggs. Hard candy, lemon cake, vibrators.”

She giggles. “When you get better,” she promises.

“How can I not? Under your care, Doctor, all things are possible.”

Toria, still point. Witch, wanderer, _doctor_.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on tumblr as [thorkily](https://thorkily.tumblr.com). Leave a comment if you have any questions, the narrative is confusing on purpose.


End file.
